As if there weren't enough to discredit the convictions of the five youths convicted of raping the Central Park Jogger in 1989, Jim Dwyer writing for the New York Times had more this week, in Hair Evidence in Jogger Case Is Discredited

"Contrary to arguments made by a prosecutor at two trials in 1990, four strands of hair were never "matched" to any of the Harlem teenagers accused of beating and raping a jogger in Central Park, a former police scientist said this week."

"The hairs, attributed to the victim and recovered from the clothing of two suspects, were the only pieces of physical evidence offered by prosecutors directly linking any of the teenagers to the crime. The hairs were also cited by the prosecution as a way for the jury to know that the videotaped confessions of the teenagers were reliable."

"Nicholas Petraco, who examined the hairs when he worked in the Police Department's criminalistics division and testified at the trials, said the technique for hair examination in 1990 was not powerful enough to tie anyone to the crime with certainty."

"You can't say `match,' " Mr. Petraco said. "It's impossible. You could never say it `matched.' It's ridiculous."

"At most, Mr. Petraco said, the hairs could be described as "consistent with and similar to" those of the defendants and the victim. The reason he used those words when he testified at the two trials, he said, was to make sure that the jurors and lawyers realized it was entirely possible for the hair to have come from other people."

Petrarco is right. Microscopic hair comparision, which is all that was available in 1990, cannot identify two hairs as the same. They can only say that two hairs have similar characteristics, but they can't say the hairs "match."

Now we have DNA hair testing that can accurately test hairs. It's done through a mitochondrial DNA test which examines the DNA in the hair shaft. It can eliminate suspects as being the source of a strand of hair.

Earlier this year, the hair attributed as being similar to one of the youths, Keven Richardson, was found definitively not to have been his. Nor did it link to any of the other convicted youths.

During his trial testimony, Petrarcho was careful to avoid describing the hair as coming from Kevin Richardson. Not so Prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer.

In her closing arguments, she used emphatic language to assert that hair found on a defendant, Kevin Richardson, had been "matched" and vouched for the reliability of the vigorously contested confessions. "Perhaps the most telling of all," Ms. Lederer said, "is the hair that was found on Kevin Richardson's clothes."

She referred the jurors to the testimony of Mr. Petraco, the expert witness called by the prosecution. But in parts of her recitation, his cautious phrasing vanished. "He found on Kevin Richardson's underpants a hair that matched the head hair of" the victim, Ms. Lederer told the jurors. "And there was a second hair on the T-shirt that matched" the victim's pubic hair. She continued: "There was yet a third hair on his jeans, on his blue jeans, that was consistent with and similar to" hair from the victim's head."

"I submit to you that Kevin Richardson's clothing got those hairs when he was with" the victim, Ms. Lederer said. "And it was because he was touching her, because he came in contact with her and with her clothes and when he was on top of her and around her, that's how he got her hair on his clothing."

In other words, D.A. Elizabeth Lederer mistated the evidence.

Law enforcement officials now believe that the hair evidence alone will warrant a new trial. DA Morganthaw has said "state law requires that a verdict be overturned if it seems that newly discovered evidence would have resulted in a different verdict."